ithout the
participation of any medium of language whatever, but also are never
even willed (intended, deliberate, voluntary), and can not under any
circumstances be set aside or altered, whether to be corrected or
falsified. An inherited defect can not be put aside, and neither can the
inherited intellect. When the outer angle at the right of the eye is
pressed upon, a light appears in the closed eye at the left, not at the
right; not at the place touched. This optical illusion, which was known
even in Newton's day, this wordless inductive inference, is hereditary
and incorrigible; and, on the other hand, the hereditary wordless
_concept_ of food can neither be prevented from arising nor be set aside
nor be formed otherwise than it was formed by our ancestors.

Innate, to make it once more prominent, is the faculty (the capacity,
the aptitude, the potential function) of forming concepts, and some of
the first concepts are hereditary. New (not hereditary) concepts arise
only after new perceptions, i. e., after experiences that associate
themselves with the primitive ones by means of new connecting paths in
the brain, and they begin in fact before the learning of speech.

A chick just out of the shell possesses the capacity to lay eggs--the
organs necessary--in fact the future eggs are inborn in the creature;
but only after some time does it lay eggs, and these are in every
respect similar to the first eggs of its mother. Indeed, the chicks that
come from these eggs resemble those of the mother herself; thus the eggs
have hereditary properties. New eggs originate only by crossing, by
external influences of all sorts, influences, therefore, of experience.

So, too, the new-born child possesses the capacity of forming concepts.
The organs necessary for that are inborn in him, but not till after some
time does he form concepts, and these are in all nations and at all
times quite similar to the first concepts formed by the child's mother.
Indeed, the inferences that attach themselves to the first concepts will
resemble those which were developed in the mother or will be identical
with them; these concepts have, then, hereditary properties. New
concepts originate only through experience. They originate in great
numbers in every child that learns to speak.

If the fact that children utterly ignorant of speech, even those born
deaf, already perform logical operations with perfect correctness,
proves the intellect to be indep